Talk:John D'Orazio

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Neutrality issues

I noticed that this article had been nominated for GA, but was unimpressed at the state of the article. It is plainly written from one point of view: that D'Orazio was essentially innocent of all wrongdoing and was hard-done by, but that's very far from a unanimous view. It takes the clear stance that not winding up with a criminal conviction means that someone's conduct was basically fine - still a questionable stance in 2022, but not the ordinary approach to politics in 2007. It also has clear issues with the writing in places (like introducing a key paragraph in the lead with "D'Orazio had several controversies in 2006.") The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

I disagree. The article certainly doesn't shy away from the controversies. Both viewpoints are discussed. There is an entire paragraph in the lead and four large paragraphs in the body on these controversies, which explain them in detail. It would be amiss not to note that he was cleared of wrongdoing in the Spagnolo case, the unlicensed driving case and the Minniti case.

I've got to say that pretty much all sources from after his death portray him in a better light than what sources at the time show. It should be noted that after his death, politicians from both sides stated that he was treated poorly by the press, the Labor Party and the public.

Colin Barnett:

While John D’Orazio’s political career had many successes, it also served as a reminder of how quickly things can unravel. A series of events forced his resignation as a minister and, later, references to John in investigations by the Corruption and Crime Commission led to his resignation from the Labor Party. Notwithstanding his mixed fortunes during this period, he remained a popular member on both sides of the house. As an Independent he co-sponsored the 2006 bill for a major trial of daylight saving. It should be noted that John was cleared of any wrongdoing with respect to the investigations through the CCC and his party membership was able to be reinstated

Eric Ripper:

Later events showed that much of this controversy was based on unfounded and/or exaggerated assertions. Ultimately, in 2008 he stood as an Independent candidate for his seat. Many Labor people deeply regret the breach that opened between John D’Orazio and our party. In time that breach may well have been healed in a formal as well as an informal sense.

Michelle Roberts:

This was not because John had ever done anything of which he should have been ashamed; it was because the Labor Party stood by and let John be treated shamefully. John was not expelled; he was prevailed upon by the then parliamentary leader to resign. I am not aware of any other similar circumstances in which anyone has been asked by either major party to resign when they have not been found guilty of anything. Indeed, John was not even charged with anything. I hope that that kind of thing will never happen in the Labor Party again. What John did in a number of instances was neither illegal nor corrupt. At worst, some of the things could be described as inappropriate or unwise. What compounded this scandal, though, was the shameful and cruel depiction of John in the print media as some kind of “Godfather”. In an instant his reputation, decency, probity and public service was sacrificed at the altar of the cheap media shot, the easy headline or the glib front page.

Source: [1]

– Steelkamp (talk) 03:26, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

That someone's factional allies seek to portray them in a more positive light, or that coverage of someone's death is less likely to speak ill of them to the same degree, does not necessary shed useful light either way. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:55, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Alright, lets analyse the six paragraphs that mention his controversies.

In 2004, D'Orazio was accused of branch stacking, with six people signed up as members of his branches saying they are not members of the Labor Party and do not want to be members. Labor Party State Secretary Bill Johnston investigated the accusations, and D'Orazio proclaimed his innocence, saying that those accusing him were aligned with Brian Burke. Preselections were put on hold during the investigation.

This is clearly neutral. I would like for there to be a resolution to this, but I couldn't find the necessary sources.

On 25 August 2003, Adam Spagnolo, a City of Stirling councillor and former mayor, City of Bayswater building maintenance officer, and D'Orazio's campaign manager for the 2001 election, and Tony Drago, the owner of a carpet company, held a meeting. They allegedly reached a deal where Spagnolo's son had a 50% stake in Drago's carpet business and Spagnolo would use his position at the City of Bayswater to give carpet contracts to the business. This came out during an investigation into the City of Bayswater in 2005 by the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC). On 22 February 2006, The West Australian ran a story on its front page alleging that the meeting took place in D'Orazio's electorate office and that he was the person who brokered the deal. The story referred to D'Orazio as "the Godfather", which he criticised as an ethnic slur. D'Orazio confirmed that he organised the meeting but said he knew nothing of the business relationship between the two and that he was only acting as a mediator. The CCC began an investigation into D'Orazio's involvement in the meeting. D'Orazio threatened legal action against The West Australian if it didn't put a front page apology to him, but neither the apology or legal action ended up occurring. The CCC cleared D'Orazio of any wrongdoing on 3 March 2006. All charges against Spagnolo were dropped in October 2007 because "there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction because an innocent explanation could not be ruled out."

Approximately the first 60% of that paragraph is simply explaining the situation. The next sentence is D'Orazio defending himself. If you want, I can add an equivalent sentence of the opposition calling for him to stand down. The second last sentence is saying he was cleared by the CCC, which is necessary to be there. The last sentence is saying that all charges against Spagnolo were dropped, which is also necessary to be there considering a large portion of this paragraph is talking about Spagnolo.

In March 2006, it was revealed that up to 15 staff at D'Orazio's pharmacy had not been payed superannuation over two to three years. D'Orazio was not the manager of the business at the time, but he still owned it. Staff at the pharmacy said D'Orazio became aware of the problem before May 2005 when an employee complained to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), but D'Orazio said he became aware of the problem in November 2005 when selling the pharmacy. The ATO gave him a directive to pay all outstanding superannuation plus interest and penalties. Pressure was put on Premier Alan Carpenter by unions to sack D'Orazio, but Carpenter continued to stand behind D'Orazio. The Police Union also backed D'Orazio.

This is neutral. First two sentences are explaining the situation. Third sentence contains the cases made by both sides. Fourth sentence is explaining more of the situation. Fifth and sixth sentence shows who was calling for D'Orazio to step down and who wasn't. The Carpenter part could be interpreted either way: as a criticism of Carpenter for not sacking D'Orazio, or as a defence of D'Orazio. Again, this paragraph is neutral.

In August and October 2005, D'Orazio was fined for speeding. On 21 April 2006, D'Orazio crashed his ministerial car. He then found out that his licence had been suspended since 22 February after failing to pay the speeding fines. The reminder notices for the fines were sent to his previous address despite him having updated his licence details several years before. On 8 May 2006, D'Orazio was dropped as Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Community Safety, and Minister for Justice, and he was instead made Minister for Disability Services, Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Interests, and Minister for Seniors and Volunteering. The following day, after criticism from the public, D'Orazio resigned from all his ministries and he became a backbencher. Police declined to charge D'Orazio for driving without a licence. Eventually, the suspension was cancelled.

The only part of this that could be interpreted as positive towards D'Orazio is "The reminder notices for the fines were sent to his previous address despite him having updated his licence details several years before", and "Police declined to charge D'Orazio for driving without a licence. Eventually, the suspension was cancelled." These are all just explaining the situation and are necessary for inclusion in the article. If you really want, I could change "after criticism from the public" to "after criticism from the public and the opposition", but that is a very minor change.

During 2006, the CCC began an investigation into Bayswater panel beater Pasquale Minniti, who was alleged to have used his connections with Western Australia Police to get speeding tickets withdrawn for those associated with him. During a CCC hearing in August 2006, six phone calls between D'Orazio and Minniti were played. In the first one, the day that D'Orazio stopped being Police Minister, Minniti offered D'Orazio help to avoid having his licence suspended. Later that day, Minniti called a friend at the police infringement management operations section, saying "we need to fix things up for John D'Orazio". The friend refused to help with D'Orazio, saying he was "unfixable". D'Orazio was seen on CCTV footage meeting at Minniti's workplace two days later. D'Orazio later tells Minniti not to get involved. On 25 August, the day after the CCC hearing played those phone calls, D'Orazio resigned from the Labor Party at the request of Alan Carpenter. Days later, D'Orazio said that the request for his resignation was unfair. In November 2008, Minniti was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Again, this paragraph is neutral. It just tells the situation as it is. D'Orazio has one sentence there to defend himself, as he should.

In December 2007, the CCC found that D'Orazio acted inappropriately but did not engage in misconduct when meeting with Minniti. The report criticised D'Orazio's failure to discourage Minniti's assistance, but said that none of it constituted an offence. D'Orazio rejoined the Labor Party in April 2008 after the party decided it was better to let him join than have a costly legal battle. This was against the wishes of Premier Carpenter, who days later said that he did not trust D'Orazio to not leak information from caucus.

The first two sentences give equal weight to criticism and exoneration. The last two sentences make it clear that him rejoining the Labor Party was against the wishes of the party and the premier. I don't see how anyone can consider this paragraph to be biased towards D'Orazio.

There are only a few small things I see could do with a change for neutrality. I can't see any basis for your original statement that "It is plainly written from one point of view: that D'Orazio was essentially innocent of all wrongdoing and was hard-done by". Steelkamp (talk) 03:18, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

There is a plainly a basis for that statement, given that you claimed above that he was "cleared of wrongdoing in the in the Spagnolo case, the unlicensed driving case and the Minniti case" when the sources only support only one of those claims with such certainty (Spagnolo). So let's go through this:

Firstly, the branch-stacking. This clearly buries the lead by talking about six people in 2004, when a quick Google search reveals that there were serious branch stacking accusations being put against D'Orazio at least as late as 2008, when no less than Mark McGowan (!) publicly described him as the "worst ethnic branch stacker in the history of the Labor Party in Western Australia". That's quite a thing to leave out.

The Spagnolo allegations are fine and do accurately represent the sources.

Now, the pharmacy allegations: our article puts an emphasis on him being "not the manager" despite the sources using no such emphasis, and carries the general implication of it being an oversight, despite the cited source quoting the head of Unions WA as criticising that notion as "unthinkable".

The section about the fines puts great emphasis on reminder notices being sent to the wrong address. This raises two issues: (1) it implies that he may not have known about the fines, when the sources don't suggest that interpretation, and (2) he was the Minister responsible for the administration of the fines and licensing systems which leads to the reasonable and common take that forgetting to pay your fines in that role to the point when you don't notice that your license has been suspended is a more serious lapse. He had even launched a campaign to remind motorists to make sure they had their licence and registration details up-to-date the previous year (a fact that was noted in coverage at the time). It's not like there's a shortage of sources for criticism of his conduct there - there's a huge abundance of them.

The section regarding the Minniti affair in the body of the article is dreadfully written but broadly neutral (apart from the suggestion that his resignation was "requested", which implies that "no" was an option), but the coverage of the same issue in the lead is terrible: there, it conveniently omits the CCC's negative findings about his conduct, and states that the Labor Party was "forced" to let him rejoin (not, as the lead implies, because there was any retraction of the reasons he was kicked out in the first place, but because the state secretary balked at the cost of fighting him in court when he sued). The Drover's Wife (talk) 07:32, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:John D'Orazio/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 16:42, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:42, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

The image is appropriately tagged and has a suitable FUR.

• "Crikey" is mis-spelled "Crickey" twice in the sources.
• Footnote 73 is "Taylor, Robert; Banks, Amanda (16 April 2008). "D'Orazio back in Labor ranks". p. 4." -- it's not clear what this refers to.
• "in 2003 he had organised a meeting between a City of Bayswater employee at the centre of a Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) investigation and the owner of a carpet business": organizing a meeting isn't wrong in itself, so I think we need to say in the lead something about the alleged deal reached between the two, otherwise the reader is left wondering why it's mentioned.

The lead is a bit long for an article of this length, but I wouldn't hold up GA for that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:41, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I've fixed all the issues you've pointed out. I've shortened the lead a little bit, but that was hard when at the same time I was lengthening it for the third point you make. Steelkamp (talk) 03:27, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Fixes look good; passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)